Inside there’s blue stitching and blue ambient lighting, while the badging features a four-point compass along with latitude and longitude co-ordinates — a homage to the geographic location of the factory where the Crossway is built.

What’s it go like?

The petrol engine produces 121kW of power and 240Nm of torque and is paired with a 6-speed auto, with drive to the front wheels.

Although the figures don’t sound that impressive, it goes better than you might think, with maximum torque available from a low 1400 revs.

Torque or twisting power is the stuff that gets a car moving off the line and because it is available early in the rev range, performance remains lively across the range.

Sport mode adds some extra zip, with gear change paddles that are fixed to the steering column and offer the driver greater control of proceedings.

Being fixed it means you don’t have to go chasing them around the wheel when the car is not pointing anything but straight ahead.

The ride is reasonably quiet and smooth on well formed roads, with a tiny, flat-bottomed steering wheel and an instrument panel that is mounted high above the wheel and setback to emulate heads up display — without actually having heads up.

It works . . . mostly . . . but the overall effect is rather cluttered, with too many switches and too much information bombarding the driver.

Cruise control requires some familiarity with the Euro style stalk control which is all but invisible once underway and has to be operated by feel.

One switch we couldn’t find but expected was the one to heat our frozen derrieres as we braved the winter night — that’s French for bum or posterior and it was a bit of a bummer.

The back seat is elevated with three individual seats that slide backwards and forwards as required, but are narrow and not terribly comfortable.

Deploying the tiny third row of seats proved unnecessarily complicated and requires a set order to achieve the desired outcome.

You get satellite navigation with speed sign recognition (but no speed camera warnings) and this can be displayed in magnificent panorama in the instrument panel, as it pushes the dials apart and aside — but guidance turned out to be a a bit hit and miss.

On an outbound journey it took us sensibly down the motorway and around the city, but on the return trip routed us right through the centre of the city — on a Saturday night?

Rated at 7.0L/100km, we clocked just under 500km at a rate of 7.3L/100km — a figure that’s not going to break the bank.

What we like?

Looks

Cool instrument panel

Good fuel economy

Third row of seats if needed

Adaptive cruise control

Auto emergency braking

What we don’t like?

Fiddly transmission change

Euro style cruise controls

Too many gadgets

Park does not engage handbrake

Front seats not heated

Small uncomfortable second and third row seats

The bottom line?

Regardless of idiosyncrasies, Peugeot’s 5008 continues to impress. It’s a stunning looking car, that packs a lot into its pactical medium-sized SUV packaging, with a price that beats the Germans hands down — this one with a powerhouse sound system.

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Chris Riley has been a journalist for almost 40 years. He has spent half of his career as a writer, editor and production editor in newspapers, the rest of the time driving and writing about cars both in print and online. His love affair with cars began as a teenager with the purchase of an old VW Beetle, followed by another Beetle and a string of other cars on which he has wasted too much time and money. A self-confessed geek, he’s not afraid to ask the hard questions - at the risk of sounding silly.